The Death of the Lob: Why the Reign of the Long Bob Needs to End

When it first emerged last fall, the mid-length bob (a.k.a., “the lob”) offered a welcome rebuttal to high-maintenance statement hair—replacing the dramatic undercuts, Technicolor dye jobs, and microbangs of recent seasons with Kurt Cobain levels of air-dried ease.

I was an instant fan, sporting the shoulder-grazing look for nearly a full year. I liked it for its notice-me-not-my-hair subtlety, and the fact that interested parties had to come closer to fully appreciate its flattering proportions—not unlike the way one feels when confronted with a quietly beautiful, perfectly cut piece from The Row or Céline. But recently, amidst an ever-growing army of identically coifed peers—at restaurants, on the beach, in the office—I began to feel as though my hair was more anonymous than understated.

The tipping point came just last week when a colleague mentioned that she had seen me leaving the office for the night wearing “the prettiest green skirt.” “Who makes it?” she inquired brightly. I don’t own a green skirt, but I have the same haircut as a coworker who does. It was time for an exit strategy.

There are only two directions in which one can go from a lob: longer or shorter. Whichever you choose, the idea is that your hair should have a distinct point of view—in other words, no more hanging out in the middle ground of mid-length. For the grow-out route, it’s relatively easy to transition with a neat knot, a look you can personalize depending on how undone or polished you want to feel, until your hair hits somewhere definitively below the shoulders. Or, you can reach for the scissors. On Friday, I rang up editorial hairstylist Christiaan, who chopped off close to six inches in under ten minutes. The result was a coolly layered chin-grazing summer crop that works with my natural texture, feels great—and, at least for now, is utterly, entirely my own.